Simply Jesus | "Jesus and Chronic Illness" - Christina Baik

The Holy Ghost of our Lord Jesus Christ, according to Mark.

And when Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a

great crowd gathered about him, and he was beside the sea.

Then came one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jarius by name,

and seeing him, he fell at his feet and employed him earnestly,

saying, My little daughter is at the point of death, come and lay

your hand on her, so that she may be made well and live.

And he went with him, and a great crowd followed him and

thronged about him. And there was a woman who had

had a discharge of blood for 12 years and who had suffered much

under many physicians and had spent all that she had and was

no better, but rather grew worse.

She had heard the reports about Jesus and came up up behind him

in the crowd and touched his garment.

For she said, if I touch even his garment, I will be made

well. And immediately the flow of

blood dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of

her disease. And Jesus, perceiving in himself

that power had gone out from him, immediately turned about in

the crowd and said, Who touched my garments?

And his disciples say to him, You see the crowd pressing

around you, and yet you say, Who touched me?

And he looked around to see who had done it.

But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear

and trembling, and fell down before him, and told him the

whole truth. And he said to her, daughter,

Your faith has made you well, go in peace and be healed of your

disease and gospel of the Lord. Hey church, will you all pray

with me please? Dear loving God, thank you so

much for all these beautiful faces, all these individuals

that you know and love so dearly.

I pray that your voice, your message for each and every one

of them may resound. In your name we pray, Amen.

Please be seated. Hi everybody.

OK, so when I walk down the street in Seoul, I haven't been

there in a long time, but in South Korea, when I do get to

visit, I often feel like my Americanness shows before I even

open my mouth. I just exude it.

So even if I were to get a haircut in a Korean salon,

dressed in my cousin's clothes and let her put like Korean

style makeup on me or whatever, and, you know, look the part on

the outside, I would still move through space in a way that is

noticeably different. I make eye contact, as Americans

do with passers by, and smile hello.

I take longer strides. I I laugh openly without

covering my mouth. These are small things, but in

that context they make me stand out quite a bit relative to many

of the women around me there. Even today, I can seem bolder,

louder, more physically present. And that's very American.

Here in the States, though, I often find that I live on the

other end of the that spectrum. I tend not to take up a lot of

space unless I make a concerted effort to, like in a classroom

or something. When I cross the street, I

hustle, like my mother does, to make sure that the drivers are

not waiting for me. And I'm always astonished by the

pedestrians that feel the sense of freedom to just like, take

their time, you know, I mean, no judgement.

There's like freedom in that. And I just, I can never bring

myself to walk slowly. I tend to stand on the edges of

a room and have like quiet, one-on-one conversations with

people instead of standing in the limelight.

And if I want to get a word in on like, a loud, boisterous

conversation or debate or discussion, such as at work or

in social situations, I have to, like, really push myself

internally to do that because it doesn't really come naturally to

me. In many ways, I've been

conditioned as an Asian American woman to take a blessed space.

And, you know, there's not necessarily anything wrong with

being deferential and respectful, right?

You know, that kind of posture towards others.

But honestly, I often wish I can feel more comfortable asserting

myself in a room. I find that cultural norms and

stereotypes can be really tricky to navigate, right?

Especially because we carry so many identities with us

everywhere we go. And how we show up depends a lot

on a given context. You know?

We wonder, like, do we feel a sense of belonging here?

How do people see us, if at all? How will we be received in a

space? The fear that no one will notice

us is real and frankly pretty common.

I'm sure many of you in this room have experienced that.

Interestingly, sometimes the deeper fear is actually that

someone will notice us and that what they see will be the very

thing that we work really hard to hide.

The part that we might be ashamed of, the part that maybe

cost us a lot in the past, or that we believe or were made to

believe makes us unworthy of love and belonging.

We learn to disappear not only because the world has ignored

us, but because being truly seen can feel too great a risk.

Sometimes I wonder how many of us carry something like that

today, something we'd rather hide than bring into the light

even before God. So when I read a passage like

this one today, where Jesus makes a point to see and honor

an otherwise unnoticed woman in a large crowd and particularly

moved, I wonder if any of you feel similarly.

I don't think you need to be a woman to relate, right?

Like the shepherd leaving the flock in search of that one lost

sheep, Jesus cares for us as individuals, even when we feel

and are alone. But before diving into the

woman's section, let's situate ourselves in today's passage

from the top. Last week, Father Samuel walked

us through the powerful way that Jesus restores a demon possessed

man on the Gentile Eastern Shore in the region of the Decapolis

and network of Greco Roman cities.

From pig farming, right, all those thousands of pigs to Pagan

practices, this area is beyond what many Jewish residents at

the time would consider clean. And Jesus went there.

He fully healed a man who had been cast off.

Jesus reconnected him to the community and then sent him out

as one of the first commissioned witnesses to Jesus work beyond

the Galilee. That's really cool.

So when Jesus in verse 21 cross again in the boat to the other

side, he's back on the western Jewish side of the sea.

Now here Gyrus holds clout as a synagogue leader.

And despite the great crowd gathered about him, Mark tells

us, quote, then came one of the rulers of the synagogue, Gyrus

by name. You can imagine the people

making room for this high position.

Man make way, make way. Tyrus is coming.

We're given his name. And some people in the crowd

likely know it too. So it's all the more

astonishing, right, for the crowd to witness this prominent

man prostrating himself completely at Jesus's feet,

imploring him earnestly, it says, to come to his home and

heal his precious daughter, his daughter Ling, his little

daughter, as it says, who is on the verge of death.

She's like literally about to die.

Gyrus's love for his daughter is evident in the way that he

throws caution to the wind and prioritizes the possibility of

Jesus healing his precious girl right.

Who cares about social pretenses and norms his position when it's

his little girl's life at stake? He has faith that Jesus only

needs to rest his hands on his girl and she'll be made well and

be able to live a full life. For those of us who read the

rest of the story, we know how much more dramatic and

miraculous his visit's going to be.

If you haven't, I encourage you to check it out and come next

week to find out more. But for now, we walk on with

them Now. Before we reach Jairus's house,

we encounter an unexpected story of restoration and Jesus is

unrestricted love for people by sandwiching jars.

The story with the story of this unnamed bleeding woman, Mark

invites us to read them alongside each other.

That's intentional. Just as Jesus crosses back and

forth to engage both the Jewish and Gentile sides of the sea, he

also crosses back and forth across the social landscape,

caring for anyone in need without discrimination.

And in fact, just because Gyrus holds clout doesn't mean he gets

to come first, right? Jesus pauses for this unnamed

woman. And Gyrus, you can imagine, he's

like, we got to go, like right now, right?

He's filled with this desperate urgency, but you know what?

He has to wait. We read in verse 25 that there

was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for 12 years

and who had suffered much under many physicians and has spent

all that she had and she was no better, but rather grew worse.

Bleeding for 12 years is already awful, but imagine have you

spent everything you had on treatment at the treatment and

none of it helped, in fact it just made it worse.

We don't know the details of her suffering under all these

physicians, but we know there were many of them and she

suffered much. And considering the crude

medical treatments of the time, we can imagine she must have

gone through some real hardship. And what's more, we know from

Jewish law and Leviticus 15 that abnormally long menstruation and

women deem them impure and untouchable.

Her condition, through no fault of her own, rendered her unable

to bear children and isolated from others, relegating her to

an extremely lonely and painful life.

And unlike Gyrus's daughter, she did not have powerful people to

advocate for her, right? And unlike Gyrus himself, she

doesn't have social capital to part the crowd, right?

Or even being named. Talk about feeling and being

invisible. It certainly puts Mike's own

experiences of feeling unseen into perspective.

At the same time, the starkness of this story highlights Jesus's

boundless compassion all the more.

In verse 27, we see that she is compelled to reach out to Jesus

for healing in response to having heard the reports about

Jesus. Now, this is notable placement

because just in the previous chapter, right in chapter 4,

when Jesus tells his disciples the parables of the sower, he

says to them, quote, he who has ears to hear, let him hear.

And if we remember that story, Jesus's own disciples, literally

right after hearing Jesus explain the parable to them, the

storm happens, they freak out, and Jesus is asleep, right?

So, you know, it's a good reminder to all of us that

understanding who Jesus is and holding a sincere belief in his

promises is less about intellect and schooling, right?

It's more about one's posture and openness to faith.

While admittedly it's can be helpful and interesting to study

scripture, learn about its historical context, maybe read

some theology, you know, none of that's really necessary to have

a meaningful life with Christ. Because Jesus.

Jesus is accessible to everyone. She understands this.

She also likely knows that this crowd is definitely not going to

part for her, right? She's probably become so used to

living on the margins, so used to taking up as little space as

possible, that she wouldn't dare disrupt Jesus journey, let alone

demand his attention the way Jairus did.

Right? She doesn't even strive to touch

Jesus body or ask him to lay his hands on her.

No, she reaches for his clothes from behind him.

But because her faith and his healing power is so secure and

so solid, she knows that even that's going to be enough.

And her faith gives her that boldness to initiate contact.

So as it says, she comes up behind Jesus in the crowd and

touches his garment. For she said, if I touch even

his garment, I will be made well.

And immediately the flow of blood dried up, and she felt in

her body that she was healed of her disease.

This healing is immediate. It's whole and it's physically

real. It's not some like metaphorical

healing. Mark gives us a bodily detail.

The flow of blood dries up and she feels in her body that she's

been healed. The suffering that marked her

life for 12 years is stopped at its source.

And Jesus power reaches even the most entrenched places of pain

and suffering. So it's never too late for Jesus

to heal someone. And I ask you to hold that close

today. The embodied nature of this

healing continues in Jesus. It says in verse 30, who

perceives in himself that power had gone out from him.

Now this is a moment where I'm like, whoa, there's some mystery

going on in here. At the very least, it appears

that reaching out to Christ in faith is enough to receive sozo,

which is the word that Mark uses here and threw out all these

intertwined stories of healing. It's worth lingering with this

word for a bit because it's pretty special.

Soso can mean not just to heal, but also to save, to rescue, to

restore, to make well, to make whole.

It's related to the root word for sotair, which is Savior.

So when Mark uses this word in these healing stories, he's not

inviting us to imagine. Jesus says work as merely like

medical treatment, as though here only solving A isolated

physical problem. Although he, you know, fixes

that too. The word opens up a fuller

picture. Rescue, restoration, wholeness

and salvation all held together. These healings, then, are like

microcosms, as you can anticipate, of the grand

salvation that will come through Jesus death and resurrection.

I mean, come on, that's so cool. But they're not only signs,

right? Pointing ahead to the real

salvation later. They're not just like previews,

placeholders. It's not like a waiting game.

In each encounter, Jesus's saving work is already breaking

into the present. And Jesus restoration is not

only promised for someday, it begins now in real bodies, in

real communities. This is true in Jesus time and

it remains true in our time today.

So as we continue unpacking this healing account, I invite you

all today, right to consider what resonance it may hold for

you. Jesus could have rushed ahead to

Jairus's house. After all, Jairus's daughter was

literally on the verge of death. It's pretty urgent.

And I'm sure Jairus was like, eager to like, hustle him along.

But Jesus stops. He turns around in the crowd and

asks who touched his garments. And considering the chaos of the

crowd pressing in on him from all sides, the disciples were

like, what? Like really Jesus?

Clearly they didn't really like, notice the woman, right?

He's like, there's like, so many people here, what are you

talking about? But of course, Jesus knows,

right? And not only does Jesus notice

this woman, he calls her out of hiding.

This is so loving. She's been so careful to make

her need invisible. She came from behind.

She touched only the fabric of his clothes.

And Jesus stops in his tracks and he asks, who touched my

garments? We can imagine the crowd

quieting into like low murmurs as their heads are swiveling

around, right? Looking for this person along

with Jesus. And in this way, Jesus creates

an opening for the woman to be seen, heard and blessed.

I mean, the crowd wouldn't have done that otherwise, right?

By stopping to ask the question and looking around to see who

had done it, Jesus causes the people around him and us to stop

and look too. Both Jesus and the woman know

what happened right? Like she reached out to him in

faith and Jesus power healed her completely.

But Jesus here is intentional and creating space for her to

testify to this herself. So we read in verse 33, the

woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and

trembling and fell down before him and told him the whole

truth. And that fear and trembling does

not mean she's afraid per SE that Jesus is about to shame or

like rebuke her. In Scripture, language like this

often belongs to moments of awe and holy encounter.

She knows something powerful and sacred happened to her.

So she comes forward trembling and tells Jesus the whole truth.

And before anyone can question this woman right, dismiss her or

quiet her, Jesus responds in the most loving way.

He calls her daughter. This is so radical and it's so

powerful. Not only is she an unnamed

woman, but she is a woman who had been rendered unclean and

untouchable for 12 years. She has no advocate, she has no

money, she has no status, and yet Jesus grants her dignity and

belonging by naming her daughter.

And on top of that, He honors the agency of her faith.

He says your faith has made you well.

Go in peace and be healed of your disease.

Notice how tender and dignifying this is.

Jesus doesn't treat her as an object of pity, nor does He

reduce her to her condition. He doesn't even make it

primarily about himself, Guys. He honors her faith, her

courage, her decision to take a risk and reach out when she's

been told to stay hidden and out of the way.

The mysterious detail of Jesus's healing power going out of Him

at her touch emphasizes the centrality of her action.

She reached out in faith, and in that reaching, she received

Sozo, healing, restoration, wholeness, salvation.

And indeed, this invites us to consider the role that our

agency, our free will, plays in our lives.

God grants us the ability to make choices every day, and so

many of us feel helpless all the time, right?

So what informs our choices, guys?

For those of us who profess faith in Christ and the promises

of the Gospel, how does that faith shape what we do?

How does it embolden us to reach out?

How does it help us act even when we're afraid, even when we

have learned to disappear? Maybe the unnamed woman's

faithful act inspires us to reach out to Christ even when we

may have been conditioned otherwise.

That's valuable, but check this out.

It's Jesus's response to her action that inspires even more

right Rather than allowing her to remain invisible, he insists

on bringing her out into the open to be boldly, openly,

freely herself. To declare in her voice the

whole truth of her testimony. And in turn, he calls her

daughter and honors her active faith as what it was has set her

free. And I believe He wants the same

for us. So what are the parts of your

life or world where you need Jesus?

Hiding our struggles doesn't resolve them, right?

We know that. So let's act in faith instead,

right? It could look like confessing an

unhealthy pattern or sin that has been dominating us.

Maybe asking a friend to hold us accountable to an important step

we've been avoiding or putting off.

Reaching out to someone that we've hurt rather than letting

that unspoken continue to fester.

Or bringing painful memories to the Lord, Praying for healing

and freedom rather than continuing to suppress them.

Maybe letting your community know of a need that may feel

shameful to admit, but would be a genuine blessing for them to

help carry for us to carry with you.

So let us not hide. Let's move from just like

surviving to agency. What's the thing you'd rather

keep hidden? What condition in your body,

your relationships, your inner life have you quietly stopped

hoping about? Maybe.

Is there a prayer you've been afraid to pray because naming

the need out loud makes it feel too real or makes you feel too

vulnerable? Do you have a testimony to

share? It might take us a little longer

to experience a full provision of Jesus.

And it took this woman, you know, although I mean, frankly,

she did wait 12 years to get to this point, right?

To be fair. But her story reminds us that

the reaching is worth it because Jesus sees us and calls us in

Hallelujah for that. Amen.